Arc IX Launch Delayed One Week

The restless spirits of the dead are coming for you! … somewhat slowly.

Insert jokes, complaints, etc. here, because we are keeping with the fine Factions tradition of lateness.

Though I had firmly intended to stick with the October 31 launch date plan, and put in about 20 hours of work this weekend to wrap Divinity, right now I’m looking at the agenda, and I’m having a mature grown-up moment. I need to be up for a fairly important workday in not very long. Not sleeping in order to bang out a bunch of mediocre lore and post sign-ups on Halloween (when people will probably be out anyway) does not seem like a smart move. All the more so because it would mean giving Bandle City Summoners less than 24 hours to realize that they won the arc and cast their victory vote for an Arc IX faction.

With sincere apologies that I wasn’t quite able to pull off what I’d hoped, I’m going to delay Arc IX by a week. October 31 will still be the crucial in-universe day when the Black Mist strikes, and probably also the day that the Guardian’s Sea nexus does its post-Divinity thing. (Morphing into some kind of combination launchpad/kraken nest, presumably; I’ll need to consult our notes on the arc ending.) However, we’re going to say that the Institute is in chaos for about a week.

During that time, I would encourage people to participate in the Arc IX finalization process on the forum, and for that matter to play Intermission matches against SI rosters and imagine themselves in an extra-spooky Valoran, while enjoying (I hope?) the Divinity wrap-up lore that I will endeavor to continue publishing at a very rapid rate.

If this unfortunately necessary delay leaves you languishing for lack of League lore, I encourage you to take a look at the catch-up lore published for Divinity, e.g.:

Alternatively, check the Divinity arc page for prior lore, or just look up some Transformers fanfic and replace the characters’ names with “Blitzcrank”, “Nautilus”, and “Orianna”.

I realize this may conjure up some bad memories of past “eternal intermissions”, but I believe this is a different scenario. We aren’t delaying the arc while we engage in circuitous speculation about “possible arc themes” or rework World Systems from the ground up. Rather, we’re giving ourselves a week to avoid trampling the end of Divinity too much and to make sure we have our schedule locked in for a smooth-running (well, by Factions standards, anyway) Arc IX.